jay writes
>Very much to the point, Diane! What I was mulling round was just how
>something in present activity triggers memory, and how that memory, once
>attended to, come-to-life as a part of present activity -- in the telling
>of it with the semantic conventions of narrative, in your case --
>triggers
>yet more memory. But not alway immediately. Wise to wait.
in this, subtly, is the desire to remember and the labo(u)r of purposeful
forgetting,
as is the case with trauma and all that is attached to that. along the
way, of course, any experience-event-scent-sound that relates to the act
of forgetting can trigger both anxiety and
more amnesia. it is often more interesting to learn what we try to forget,
or "accidently" forget, as a clue to what we might yet remember.
>
>
>What determines not just which memories come after a while, but how long
>it
>takes them to "surface"? We think a lot about associations and
>intensities
>of linkage among memories, but not so much about the "real-time" dynamics
>of the process. Bourdieu pointed out, to Levi-Strauss and his
>structuralists, that it matters not just what is done, but how soon, how
>early or late. Pacing and timing also have meaning, and perhaps in the
>case
>of memory and remembering, significance as well.
well in the book i read/reviewed, about bio-cultural research concerning
emotions, there is much to be understood about the relation between
emotion and memory, the ability to remember and the "will" to remember
often conflicted with deeper needs for self-preservation. again, as much
as what we recall is connected with other memories and experience, much of
what we forget is also organized in the same way.
i suppose these hint at my interests in the un/examined life, and the ways
a person who spends energy on
controlling memory understands themselves and learns new activity,
or who won't learn, and so on.
>
>I doubt it is just a matter of brain architecture, either. The brain can
>do
>all these things pretty quickly. And if there are "old neurons" that
>haven't fired in many years (or more likely old pathways of firings
>through
>clusters of neurons), what determines the latency, the time it takes them
>to get back 'on line'? Is it just chemistry? and if so, probably not a
>simple chemistry, but a complex one (i.e. nonlinear auto- and
>cross-catalytic) ... in the technical sense that its timing may depend
>on
>factors from many contexts ... one of which surely is the on-going
>current
>neural activity, a part of which is ... what? ... that continuing but now
>unconscious 'will to remember' or 'need to remember"? ... perhaps an
>iteration of the truncated sequence that started to invoke the memory,
>again and again until the sequence carries forward? or something like
>that
>but not so simple?
indeed. more to it, i think, is the social component, that what other
people say, remember, speak about, do, likely triggers memory in the form
of articulate experience. we need others to help us remember. from
learning how to operate a lathe to remembering "that summer we all went
fishing," all of it is substantially enabled with social "voices" in our
heads, as well as those in the immediate act of remembering - with others.
i'm not sure the brain operates in a timed sequence, that is, we can
measure links of neural process but research also admits to the
simultaneity of the firings. there is a decided somatic relation to
memory, of course, our bodies remember much more than our brains: i.e.,
kinetic memory has no visual or linguistic component, but can be, with
effort, translated.
in my case, for example, excessive heat and humidity prompts recollections
of Africa, as does a gust a dust in my face/eyes, the scent of old growth
forests, as well as malaria-like symptoms of the flu which
continue to recur.
the iteration of memory is fascinating, yes. "what happened next?" is
teased, through a persistent replay of the unfinished sequence that can be
recalled, but - BIG BUT - the idea that memories are "real" in sequence is
mythic, because our narrating consciousness often provides us with kinds
of substitutions.
NOT to say i believe in such a thing as "false memory," but that
we sometimes invent what might not have happened to "represent" what
cannot be precisely recalled.
the uses of symbolic experience to represent what cannot be remembered is
as valid as the actual experience, of course, ... it maybe chemistry that
prompts us into the work of these substitutions. HUH.
fascinating.
>
>
>And under those conditions, a neural chemistry hypersensitive to so much
>... what sorts of meaning attach to the timings and rhythms and
>disjunctions of remembering? attach because these phenomena of
>remembering
>incorporate and index these others goings-on .... our moods, our
>persistent
>needs, the longer timescale enduring carrier-wave of the activity of
>writing, of coming to terms with ..... and also, no doubt, the technology
>of narrative itself, which must also have some patterning effects on what
>all the brain tends to do Next and After.
>
>As with psycho-analysis, or hypnosis, it is quite remarkable what we are
>capable of remembering ... and when we remember may tell us as much as
>what
>we remember.
>
>Have you noticed? :)
indeed. i've noticed. :)
as i indicated, it is the gaps, lapses, and omissions of memory that often
reveal more than the iterative remembering. because remembering occurs in
the present, of course, we may be culling from previous experiences but we
are not "experiencing" the past so much as enlivening the present.
and the cultural structure of narration has everything to do with it.
as for the words, i can't get past the grammar - memory is a noun,
remember is the verb. what would helpfully move beyond that grammatical
function?
thanks Jayster
diane
>
>
diane celia hodges
university of british columbia, centre for the study of curriculum and
instruction
vancouver, bc
mailing address: 46 broadview avenue, montreal, qc, H9R 3Z2
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